"And what makes me really angry about that Apple thing? The fact that Tim Cook plays such the privacy advocate," wrote Peter Strzok, an FBI counterintelligence agent, wrote on February 9, 2016. "Yeah, jerky, your entire OS is designed to track me without me even knowing it."

A week after that exchange , the strained relationship between Apple and the nation's top law enforcement agency became international news when Cook wrote an open letter explaining why Apple would not create special software to unlock the shooter's iPhone, defying a request to do so by the FBI. The FBI eventually dropped the request because it found a third-party vendor who was able to extract data from the iPhone 5C without Apple's help.

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Courtesy of the Hillary Clinton probe

The exchange between FBI agents Strzok and Page is part of hundreds pages of bureau text messages recently published by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs as part of a Republican-driven investigation into how the the bureau handled the Hillary Clinton probe.

While the texts may not reveal a " bombshell " conspiracy inside the FBI related to the Clinton investigation, they do provide a revealing window into how some people inside the FBI reacted to the standoff with Apple. The discussion is a long-running, unguarded conversation between two people who were close to each other and their opinions cannot be taken to represent all FBI agents. Earlier this year, for instance, a FBI agent in San Francisco publicly praised Apple and its willingness to work with law enforcement.

Although Strzok nor Page were apparently on the Apple case, at one point, Page appears to have been told who the FBI contracted with the ultimately unlock the phone without Apple's help, which remains a public secret. Comments that appear to provide revealing information about the third-party is redacted in the published texts.

The two FBI employees seem to be skeptical of Cook and Apple throughout their text relationship — although they were also critical of many other people and institutions including politicians, newspapers, and foreign spies. The two also lament that it appeared to them as if Apple had won the public relations battle over the phone.

February 9, 2016 — accusations of hypocrisy

FBI

The battle between Apple and the FBI had not yet broken out into international news. On February 9, then-FBI director James Comey announced that the bureau had not been able to access data on an iPhone 5C used by Syed Farook, who had committed a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

“We still have one of those killer’s phones that we have not been able to open,” Comey said.

It was then that both Page and Strzok started following the issue. "And what makes me really angry about that Apple thing? The fact that Tim Cook plays such the privacy advocate," Strzok wrote.

"The times, for once, does a decent job of explaining our position, for once," he concludes.

Most of Page's reply is redacted, but she asks, "What was the Apple thing?"

"You can tell me on imsg, or it can wait," she continues, suggesting she knows that these texts are being recorded. iMessage, Apple's messaging service, is end-to-end encrypted, which offers additional privacy benefits.

It wasn't the first time that the two had discussed the trade-offs between computer security and law enforcement priorities. In 2015, Page had sent a link to a blog post about a government court filing about Apple's encryption, noting, "Still, I like the reasoning. Yay imsg".

March 6, 2016 - Staying abreast of Apple news

FBI

Page sent Strzok a link to a New York Times article with a comment that is redacted in the public version of the texts.

September 2, 2016 — Love the tech, not the techies

Page replies: "It helps that the Director and Deputy really hate these phones too. And really love their personal iphones."

Strzok: "Now if Tim Cook would only fall off the face of the earth."

The subsequent discussion that reveals how some people at the FBI feel about the country's most valuable technology company — the love the products, but dislike the people in charge. The text also suggests that Comey, as bureau director, has a personal iPhone that he likes.